


Scheherazade -- or -- A thousand and one youkai

by Esinde Nayrall (red_squared)



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Community: Saiyuki_time, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-08-14
Updated: 2009-08-14
Packaged: 2017-10-09 19:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/90567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/red_squared/pseuds/Esinde%20Nayrall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>None.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scheherazade -- or -- A thousand and one youkai

**Author's Note:**

> **Notes**: Written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/saiyuki_time/profile)[](http://community.livejournal.com/saiyuki_time/)**saiyuki_time** prompt 61 "hustling", and using the interpretation of bluffing, gambling or persuasion. 45 minutes allowed, 70 minutes taken, including 10 minutes to read over and tidy, and maybe 5-10 more to look things up on-line and in the manga. Also, some text is taken directly from the manga, or a translation of Graffiti or Saiyuubito.

"If he can save you, then he can have you," he'd promised the prisoner, a few days after his men – he'd sent a full unit of twelve on the mission, and nine had returned – had brought her to his father's castle."But we're more than a thousand strong," he'd felt it was only fair to point out. "Do you really think he can?"

She hadn't said anything in reply. She had just smiled at him in that manner that she had – cool, inscrutable – raising a finger to tap against her lips, and giving nothing away.

It was two weeks after that that he found out that _she _was responsible for the three who hadn't returned. Her smile at _that_,when he'd asked her about it, had been one of the darkest things he'd ever seen– still cool, but at the same time, malicious and soaked with hate – and her _eyes_...

She'd schooled the rest of her face into a pleasant smile that did not touch those remarkable, dark, green eyes of hers at all, which had sent a low thrum of fear of thrilling through him, as she politely asked whether their agreement still held.

_If he can save you, then he can have you_.

And he wondered if this small, slender _human _girl, alone and unprepared, could fight hard enough to takedown three of his men with the kitchen knife she'd been cutting vegetables with when they'd come for her, then would her twin brother be able to... ?

_Ridiculous_, he'd told himself. It wasn't though her twin had been able to rally the support of their village. He was coming alone. One _human._Against an entire clan of youkai.

"Going already?" she'd asked as he turned to leave. "I have a riddle I made up, just for you," she added, with a small smile.

And so he'd stayed, and listened while she finished, and after he thought about what the answer might be, and tried a solution, she'd smiled and said she'd tell him if he was right or wrong the next day.

"Ah, so you've heard the stories about my clan," he'd said, amused by the transparency of her wiles. "If you don't bore us, then we won't eat you, yes?"

Those few words had been enough to break the spirit of any number of women brought to the castle, who would beg for the privilege of pleasing his father, if it meant a clean death with one stroke of a sword or one thrust of a knife, instead of his father's preferred method.

But this prisoner, once again, had simply smiled – again, that cool, inscrutable smile that never touched her hate-filled eyes – and said, politely, "Perhaps talking about myself like this _is_ boring. How rude of me." She laughed, in a charming, self-deprecating way – and _again_, her laughter never reached her eyes – and then said, "Tell me something about yourself, then."

"About me..." he'd said, pulling up a chair and deciding that his other duties could wait a while yet, while he tried to think of something he could tell her without actually giving away anything about himself."Do you like dolls?"

It was the first time _he'd_been able to say something that startled _her_,and he's fairly sure that he kept her for himself – away from his father, and his father's men (and the wives and children of the men whose deaths she'd been responsible for) – mainly for that reason. To see if he could provoke that genuine startlement – or that genuine hatred – out of her once again.

"So this lover of yours is your brother as well," he'd said, when he found out from one of his spies. At the time, he'd been working on one of his dolls, having brought parts of his workshop down to the dungeons to save time. "And a twin, too. Are you able to communicate with him like that?"

It would certainly explain one or two things, like the way the man had been able to track down exactly which castle his sister was being held in. His father had more than one, after all, scattered across the Shangri-La, but this twin of hers had made straight for this one, like a homing pigeon.

"That would be cheating," he'd added, as a mild admonishment, but she'd simply smiled back in that way of hers – try as he might, he could not reproduce that smile on any of his dolls – and left unsaid that they had only specified one rule.

"Does he look like you, this twin?" he'd asked to fill the silence, as he sanded smooth the fingers of his newest doll.

"His face probably does. You'll meet him too; he's almost here, after all," she'd said, again with that thrilling smile.

"And when he arrives? What will he do then, do you think?" he'd asked, still sanding absently, but looking at her all the while.

"Ah," she'd said, tapping a finger against her lips, and looking up and away as though puzzling out a riddle, "probably only one thing."

"How can you be so sure? If you're not speaking with him, after all. Perhaps he's forgotten about you, and found another love," he'd suggested.

That polite smile froze on her lips, and her _eyes_ – he'd spent many fruitless days trying to reproduce _that _look on his dolls, as well...

"I know my little brother," she'd said, with absolute certainty, even though he'd spent the previous weeks having his messengers deliver her news that her brother had been killed. Or that her brother had left Shangri-La and moved to the western continent. Or that the clan had bought her brother off.

Each time, she'd smiled and said that no, he was coming for her. And had they not agreed that if he could save her, he could have her?

~*~

"So you heard how my father was killed," he tells her. She doesn't say anything – she can't after all, not gagged like that, and even without the gag, he's taken pains (_her_pains) to ensure she can't raise her voice above a whisper – and so he continues. "Torn into pieces like that... Perhaps your brother thought that was how he wanted to die," since after all, that was how his father preferred to kill his women when he tired of them.

"Ah, and here comes your hero now," he says, and they watch the hallway together, listening as her twin stumbles down the steps, and enters the corridor.

His first thought is that his prisoner and her rescuer don't look anything alike, but then he steps into the torchlight, and he can make out the green in the man's eyes even at this distance, and even with injury marring the man's right eye.

He wonders if he can make _that _face twist in hatred, as well.

"Gonou?"

Her rescuer turns at the sound of her voice, still several cells away from where he and she – still securely gagged – are hiding.

"I did say he could have you if he saved you," he whispers to his prisoner, as her rescuer – this Gonou – stops where he is, several cells away from her, transfixed. "Ah, there," he croons, as her expression shifts into hatred. "That's what I wanted to see."

_She was terrifying_,his men had said, when they'd returned with her, and he had looked at this small, slender, _human _creature, and had the nine who'd returned executed for their incompetence.

But he knows better now, after what her brother – poor preoccupied thing, to come so close only to meet with failure – has done to his clan.

And the expression on her face now, the way her lips twist around the gag even as the sound of her voice fills the stillness of the dungeons— _I'm carrying his child. The spawn of that... **beast **is resting in my belly. _

_That_ is what he's tried for so long to provoke, just to see if his men were telling the truth after all.

"He's come so close, hasn't he?" he whispers, as his prisoner struggles against her bindings. All to no avail, as her voice continues relentlessly on — _That's why...Good-bye, Gonou_

"A real pity, isn't it? I don't normally mind bending the rules," he says softly. "But we only agreed to one rule, and its seems a shame to break that," he points out, watching his prisoner as she watches her rescuer who watches in horror as the doll in the cell – the doll he'd worked on during his visits with his favourite prisoner – unsheathes the knife and aims it at its womb.

"**_KANAN!_**"

"Oh, don't close your eyes like that. Not after I went to so much trouble to get your likeness exactly right," he murmurs, watching with interest as she opens those lovely green eyes again, finally looks away from her twin —who has collapsed brokenly in front of the doll's cell – and eyes him with purest hatred. "But now I must ask you to wait for me," he says, lowering his head and pressing a kiss to her gagged mouth. "I have one more thing to attend to, and then I shall come back for you."

He loosens the gag so that he can kiss her properly. And he's waited so long to have her, after all. It's only fair. _Isn't it?_

"Because he's failed, and as we agreed, that means you're mine. What do you have to say to that, hmm?"

Her expression softens, as she clears her throat – not nearly loud enough to be heard by her twin – and says, "How many of you has he killed to get this far? Do you think he won't kill you, too?"

He doubts it very much. Because whoever else her twin has killed to come this far, everything he's done has been for _her_, and now that he is under the impression that she is beyond rescue, he should be easy enough to dispose of.

But that does make him curious, as he leaves her in the darkness to go and take care of this one last thing, as to how many youkai her brother has killed. Or more correctly, how many youkai her brother has bathed in the blood of.

_And if he were like us, too, would she want to be rescued by one such as him?_

It occurs to him that there's another game they can play – all three of them, as he asks her to choose.

"Ah," he says, coming up to her brother from behind, while he clutches at the bars of the doll's cell, "did the woman die? How very kind."  


**Author's Note:**

> So.
> 
> First of all, constructive criticism on this piece is welcomed!
> 
> This is an idea I've had for a while, ever since I read [](http://konnyakuhonyaku.livejournal.com/profile)[**konnyakuhonyaku**](http://konnyakuhonyaku.livejournal.com/)'s translation of the bits and pieces in [](http://konnyakuhonyaku.livejournal.com/6058.html)**Graffiti**.
> 
> That and... I love Kanan, and I would love even more for her to not be dead. Even though I love 5885, too. *sigh*
> 
> But in Saiyuki V4, you see what Gonou and Kanan's house looks like after she's taken, and there's overturned furntiure, and smashed up household things, and I can only imagine that she did not go quietly when they came for her -- particularly since nobody else in the village seems to have offered any resistance.
> 
> It was this latest [](http://community.livejournal.com/saiyuki_time/profile)[**saiyuki_time**](http://community.livejournal.com/saiyuki_time/) prompt and the newest information on [](http://konnyakuhonyaku.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://konnyakuhonyaku.livejournal.com/)**konnyakuhonyaku** that got me off my butt to write it. In particular, this bit:
>
>> It isn't drawn in the books, but the reason he [Chin Yisou] holds such an interest in Hakkai lies in some past contact or conversation he had with the kidnapped Kanan. If you think about that carefully... Kanan was a fearsome woman.
> 
> Which... Well, I don't really like the fanon trope of Kanan as damsel in distress who ungratefully committed suicide after everything Hakkai had done to save her, so when I saw that new information, on the same day as I saw this prompt, I absolutely had to write this :D
> 
> Thanks for reading if you made it this far, and as I said a few paras up, con-crit is very much welcomed!
> 
> All comments and kudos are appreciated and treasured -- even (especially?) on a fic as old as this one!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [A Thousand And One Broken Bodies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/187277) by [Cornerofmadness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cornerofmadness/pseuds/Cornerofmadness)




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